Recently, a rich list caused a sensation. A man named Zhao Changpeng became the richest man in China by virtue of his investment in virtual currency, even surpassing the world's well-known business giants such as Jack Ma, Wang Jianlin, Ma Huateng, etc. His net worth is as high as 573.3 billion yuan, which is 366.5 billion more than Li Ka-shing.
Who is Zhao Changpeng? He is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. How did he do that? How did he use virtual currency to create wealth? What are the unknown secrets and risks in his story?
Zhao Changpeng was born in 1977 in a Gaozhi family in Jiangsu. His father was a university professor and provided him with a good educational environment. He immigrated to Canada with his parents when he was a teenager and began a life of working. He studied hard and was admitted to the computer science major at the University of Montreal, which laid the foundation for his future.
After graduation, he worked at the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg Exchange, accumulating experience in finance and technology. In 2005, he returned to China to start a business and chose Shanghai, a prosperous city, to develop a high-speed and high-frequency trading system to provide services to securities firms.
In 2013, his life took a turn. He first heard about the concept of Bitcoin during a poker game and was attracted by its decentralized features. He decided to take a big gamble and invest all his assets in the virtual currency market. He even sold his $1.1 million house in Shanghai and bought all of his money in Bitcoin. His gambling behavior earned him huge returns.
In 2017, he spotted the development trend of digital currencies and founded the Binance exchange to provide trading services for cryptocurrencies. He also issued his own coin called Binance Coin (BNB). Binance exchange has grown at an alarming rate. Within half a year, it surpassed Deutsche Bank’s profits and became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Four years later, his net worth soared and he became the richest man in China.
As a leader in virtual currency, Changpeng Zhao’s status and wealth are also unstable. He himself is unwilling to admit that he is the "richest man in China". He believes that this title is groundless and untrue. But it is undeniable that Binance established by Changpeng Zhao has had a great impact on the entire virtual currency market and has also played a leading role in the future virtual currency market.
